Commitment devices offer an opportunity to restrict future choices. However, if severe restrictions deter participation, weaker restrictions may be a more effective means of changing behavior. We test this using a school-based commitment savings device for educational expenses in Uganda. We...

With European governments cutting back on spending, many are asking whether this could make matters worse. In the UK for instance, recent OECD estimates suggest that 'austerity' will lead to another recession, which in turn may lead to a higher debt-to-GDP ratio than before. As the debate heats...

A number of tools have been suggested for solving the European sovereign debt crisis, in particular the options of leveraging the EFSF/ESM, introducing Eurobonds and a European Troubled Asset Relief Programme (Euro-TARP). However, it is unclear how these instruments will work, given jittery...

Direct payments were originally justified as a mechanism to compensate farmers for the income loss incurred due to reduced intervention prices. However, this rationale is not valid any more, and a new justification for basic income support by granting basic decoupled direct payments has been...

In most instances, the dynamic response of monetary and other policies to shocks is infrequent and lumpy. The same holds for the microeconomic response of some of the most important economic variables, such as investment, labor demand, and prices. We show that the standard practice of estimating...

Partnerschaft zwischen Geber- und Empfängerländern soll zu mehr entwicklungspolitischer Wirksamkeit beitragen. Die Stärkung der Eigenverantwortung der Empfänger ist dabei ein zentrales Prinzip. Dazu bekannten sich zumindest die traditionellen DAC-Geber nicht zuletzt in der "Erklärung von...

The European Union (EU) recently presented a new development policy agenda that centers on the subject of change. We first assess the approach of the EU policy by discussing change in the sense of how it is used within the EU agenda. Second, we relate it to two recently published political...